Note: One of the many integrity issues with Catlin is that none of their photos can be dated. Even embedded EXIF information (including date/time done by most digital cameras in use today) has been removed from gallery photos on the website. For all we know this photo above they included in their just released report could have been taken during training. The high photographic angle suggests the photographer was standing on something, but what? Further, no raw data is offered in their first report, we are expected to take it on faith I suppose. Given their admittedly fraudulent biometric readings, and lack of candor on their ice radar, how can we trust anything they publish? So far for a “science” mission I remain unimpressed with the effort or the transparency. – Anthony

The ice thickness measurements that Pen and the team have been able to phone in imply that they are travelling over predominantly thick first‐year ice. Satellite imagery of the area, especially passive microwave imagery (e.g. AMSR and QuikScat data), indicates the area is indeed covered primarily with first‐year ice and a scattering of multi‐year ice floes.

The report summary is :

The results collected in the first month of the Catlin Arctic Survey point to an unexpected lack of thicker Multiyear Ice.

If they were looking for older ice, there were many obvious (and shorter) routes they could have chosen. What made them choose this route, which was apparently too long to be completed and which started on first year ice?

Most of the report is regurgitated satellite data, but there are a couple of particularly interesting items:

One further consideration, when interpreting the ice thickness measurements made by the CAS team, is navigational bias. The team systematically seeks out flatter ice because it is easier to travel over and camp on.

and

The ice thickness measurements that Pen and the team have been able to phone in imply that they are travelling over predominantly thick first‐year ice.

In conclusion:

They seek out “flat” (implying thinner and younger) ice

They planned on being on multi-year ice, even though the satellites showed that their route is on first year ice.

The first year ice they are on is “thick.”

Their measurements agree closely with satellite data.

In other words, they could have been home enjoying a pint in sunny England, and waited to see what happens to the ice this summer.

Expedition Leader Pen Hadow who remembers feeling angry a few days into the expedition because he felt that, between expeditions, his memory had tricked him over the cold.

“Although I’ve been here before, I wasn’t able to hold the memory of just how uncomfortable, in an almost surreal sense, it really is”, he says.“When you’re warm, at home, you can tell yourself how awful it’s going to be, but when you get here, the shock of it hits you all over again and you really can’t believe you’ve allowed yourself to go through it again“.

This is a “Fail” on a 5th Form science test ( Grade 11 for the USA) – poor experiment design. I mean, this is what schoolkids are told – have a Theory, construct a hypothesis and design a experiment to test that hypothesis and check that the design is not biased. This expedition is akin to looking for signs of drought in the Australian outback. A PR stunt that risks lives for no purpose at all.

Mutliyear ice isn’t going to be flat unless by some fluke. It will have been compressed, broken, compressed again, and broken again and compressed some more. It would be a jumble with MAYBE a misleading appearance of flatness from accumulated snow filing in the depressions.
I still believe they could have hired a helicopter survey crew to drill a series of holes a certain distance apart and have been done with this ages ago.

Catlin. Isn’t that a UK insurance firm? Let’s hope they don’t go belly-up in the current economic climate. Could be embarrassing to get stuck on the ice because the money man went bust.
Looks like they were racing to the pole this last day. Yesterday their total distance traveled was 316.69 km; today it’s 343 km. So they went 26.31 km in one day. Can’t see them doing much drilling if they’re covering such a distance while towing hundreds of kg of equipment and supplies.
I also see they’re still having the pole moving towards them. Their latest reported position is at 84° 46′ N (84.77°N). That would put them at 5.23° of latitude from the pole. Again, with each degree of latitude representing approx 111.6 km, that would make the distance to the pole as 583.67 km. Yet Catlin reports the distance to the pole as being 548.93 km. So, the question is, do they know where they are?

How much thicker should multi-year ice be anyway? It seems a simple matter of conduction of heat from ocean water to ambient air. Once you get to six feet of ice, the heat flux you can transport through the ice must drop drastically, hence impeding the formation of more ice.
I can see that two year ice would be thicker, but I don’t believe it would be anywhere near double the thickness of one year ice.

The Catlin field trip is as KimW states, a FAIL. Looking at the image at the top of the article caused me to go on my own field trip – to the Catlin web site! What prompted this was the high photographic angle commented on by Anthony. I did not look at every image in the Catlin site but I did see many and have come away with an observation. Given that they have choosen to not geo-locate nor time stamp images we MUST assume a degree of skepticism when viewing. I note the following.
1). The only images of Pen in an orange over parka are when he is drilling ice or getting off the transport aircraft.
2). There are no images of Pen in an orange parka when is not drilling nor in sunny weather.
2b). All of the images of Pen doing ice depth measurements seem to have been photographed under similar low contast overcast day(s?).
3). As noted by Anthony they have a systematic desire to traverse flat ice. There are images showing the team climbing ice ridges a meter or more in thickness. I wonder if those ever get measured and rolled into the average.
Unless someone at Catlin, or associated with the that team, can convincingly correct me I must conclude that ‘All Catlin Expedition drilling images are from a photo-opportunity staged previously and are NOT representative of actual events now ongoing. I will be happy to be corrected and will publicly correct this post should it be required.
SL

When they report the distance traveled each day, how do they account for the drift of the ice they are trudging across? I imagine that what they are actually reporting is the change in their position each day as determined by GPS, not necessarily the distance they actually walked.
Is there a plot anywhere of the actual path they have followed so far? I couldn’t find one at their website. I think that examining the path they travel at night while sleeping would be interesting.

Where is the base supply camp from which the flights originate?
i.e. – there must be some way to verify that they are indeed up in the Arctic other than a few meager photos and some stats on a website.
Are there other places from which similar scenes of ice can be found but not be in the Arctic, say Great Slave Lake, Hudson Bay??

Before the advent of blogs such as this one, an expedition of this type could have easily gotten away with every single claim they have made. Only now do we have the capability to really examine their claims and point out the inconsistencies – and downright lies.
I’m quite confident that in the end they will claim victory and issue dramatic press releases shouting the same gloom and doom story about the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.

Jorge C 14:45:06
That link to Connolley’s blog is the funniest thing I’ve read all day. I hope I’m not laughing out of the other side of my face when this expedition turns tragic from the foolishness of its perpetrators.
=========================================

OT: What happened with the oil post? It suddenly disappeared .REPLY: I sent an email to the author with a notice that I published it and a question and it bounced. If I can’t contact the author then I can’t in good faith keep it online, so it is shelved for now. – Anthony

Well, temperatures are up to -16C now at the pole (ish. buoy is at 86.161°N ) and rising at a fairly rapid rate (9 degrees over the last 4 days). At this rate of rise, the Arctic Ocean will be boiling in 52 days. 😉

O/T
I may have missed a comment about this the past couple weeks, but it looks like there’s a new player in town — Climate Depot. Looks to be formatted along the lines of Drudge Report, for the AGW skeptic community; heade up by Marc Morano Check it out.http://climatedepot.com/

I’m sure someone has already brought up the question, but wouldn’t “unexpectedly thick first-year ice” mean that “it’s a LOT colder than ‘normal’” and, by default, mean that the Arctic has decided to ignore Mann, Hansen, Gore, Steig, et al and go ahead follow the Sun’s lead and rush headlong into an era of bitterly cold weather climate, CO2 levels be darned? (Not sure if “d*mned” would get snipped.)
As an aside, would it be too harsh to suggest that, perhaps, the photographer who took Pen’s mysteriously-redacted picture might have been standing on a polar bear’s shoulders to get that high-angle shot?

Hadow is enjoying the warmer -30′, though his cup of hot water tossed into the air freezes instantly.
“It’s . . pretty,” he says,” . . . like children’s glitter.”
Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark – when the Nazi, Toht, watches as the Ark is opened – right before God’s wrath makes his face melt ?
“It’s beautiful,” he says.
I’m picturing Hadow transfigured as ice glitter.
Sorry, but this scam in pursuit of capping the AGW case – is making me mad.
It’s 45° in northwest Ohio and there are snow showers on order for Tuesday night.
Illigettimi.
(Moderator. Go ahead – snip, but hey! – it’s the language of scholars;0)

Okay. Maybe someone has already thought of this, and perhaps someone has already said this in comments but…exactly WHY is the lack of multi-year ice a shocking find (just shocking, I tell you!) after the screaming, moaning, and doomsaying about the Arctic in the summer of 2007? That was a real dip in what we are used to seeing for summer ice, though I am not sure I would call it extreme, but it was certainly noticeable. Yet if that is the case, we’re not even 2 years removed from that event. And they are stunned (just stunned, I tell you!) at the lack of multi-year ice? Uhhh…. Have they been asleep the past 2 years?
Like others, I expect whatever findings they do send back to line up exactly with what the Warmist camp is screaming about. Given the complete lack of verifiable data, I won’t even say that I expect them not to make it the entire way because I can’t say as I believe that they are actually there. There’s basically no data given or available that proves that they were actually there and that absolutely could not be derived from satellites and other remote measuring devices. They could be holed up at some Caribbean resort for all I know while all of this is going on, except I guess they might want to stay out of the sun. It wouldn’t look good to come back from the mean ol’ cold Arctic with a tan now would it? Since the debate is over, and the Arctic is going to be ice-free in 5 years (thank you for both points, Al Gore!) I don’t even expect their measurements to be open to outside verification beyond the buddy-system of the Warmist camp. And won’t we all be just shocked (shocked, I tell you!) when that happens?

Tim Channon Well if this were March 21st and they were at the pole the sun would be just on the horizon and the shadow would go from miles until it blurred (burred?) or diffracted into nothingness. Come June 21st and if they were at the pole they would have the sun 23 degrees above the horizon all day long. Trouble is that I don’t believe that is a shadow. Neither the man nor the other equipment seem to be casting shadows. My suspicion is that its a line in the snow made when they assembled the drill. Sorry. – SL

Tim:
Using The Sky v 5 level II, and inputing today’s date, noon, 84.5 N, I get an altitude of 16 deg 41minutes looking due South.
Inputting 60 N, same date & time, looking due South, I get 40 deg 41 minutes altitude.
I’m hazarding a guess that the light shadow from top of pole to ground is from that altitude relevant to the Sun.
60 N fits the bill.
No way to tell if it’s another copter shining a light down or not.

If anything these clowns say means anything, then I interpret,predominantly thick first‐year ice.
to mean the first year ice they encountered was thicker than anticipated, presumably thicker than the satellite data says. Which would mean they weren’t confirming the satellite measurements.

The image is 510 x 337 saved to my PC.
640 x 480 would be a standard vid-cam output.
The image is also vignetted, making for a perfect inverted U shape in the center. I would think it is clipped, as 510 x 337 pixels isn’t exaclty a standard cmos or ccd output. Perhaps there are chips like that, but I haven’t come across any.
The RGB breakdown gives the shadow strong in the Blue, weak in the Red, with Green in between. Does that tell us anything?REPLY: I format images to 510 wide for the blog, original is embedded in the PDF report – Anthony

I raised the question in a couple of posts ago. Admittedly, I am not willing to runa round waiving my arms in teh air yelling “fraud”. But, we have no evidence of them actually being there at all.
Only a sworn affidavite from air the supply company will put to rest this nagging nag.
This photo was taken from the air.

Robert Bateman (15:17:33) :According to the link above they are going to reach the Pole in 80 days. If I read the PDF maps right, they will not make it due to open waters.
Shouldn’t they have a kayuk to paddle about in?
You’re missing the whole point fo teh exercise – the dramatic resuce footage of them being lifted from the melting ice-free Arctic ocean.

Reuters just spread this around the globe in their Planet Ark Bulletin “Your Daily Guide to helping the Planet”:
“Lack Of Permanent Arctic Ice Surprises Explorers
Date: 20-Apr-09
Country: CANADA
Author: David Ljunggren”
excerpts:
“OTTAWA – The head of a British team walking to the North Pole on a mission to gauge how fast Arctic ice sheets are melting said on Friday he was surprised by how little permanent ice he had found so far.
Pen Hadow and two other adventurers set off in early March on a 1,000-km (620-mile) trek from Canada’s Arctic to the North Pole. The team was set down in an area where scientists had been sure there would be permanent multiyear ice.
But so far, the average depth of the ice has been just under 1.8 metres (6 feet), suggesting they are finding predominantly new first-year ice that is likely to melt in summer months.”
It’s infuriating how this drivel is disseminated, to be picked up by assignment editors all over the world…
the current WUWT thread has abundantly demonstrated that satellite data clearly indicated that first-year ice was to be expected during their early trek – and now this blatant deception. And talking about permanent multiyear ice – only land-fast ice is semi-permanent, as many submarine missions have demonstrated and as is well-known from traditional ecological knowledge…
shocking and infuriating! I will try to find the authors email address…
here is the complete story: http://planetark.org/wen/52513

Tim re the shadow angle. How did you get that? I don’t see it in the photo above. In any case if it is a shadow, it certainly does look like too high a vertical angle for 85N. One can’t calculate the angle unless one knows the distance and elevation of the camera from the scene. The shadow line would, of course be foreshortened, but lets see if a large benefit of the doubt is assumed what we get. If it is assumed that the length of the shadow is three times the apparent length, which seems generous, then the angle (tan angle at the end of the shadow is 5.7cm/12) is about 26degrees. The shadow should be about 6 times its apparent length to give us 15 degrees or so. This is either is not a shadow or they are about 60 to 70 degrees N at best – I agree with Robert Bateman 17:42:03

Bobby Lane (17:38:44) :
“Okay. Maybe someone has already thought of this, and perhaps someone has already said this in comments but…exactly WHY is the lack of multi-year ice a shocking find (just shocking, I tell you!) after the screaming, moaning, and doomsaying about the Arctic in the summer of 2007? That was a real dip in what we are used to seeing for summer ice, though I am not sure I would call it extreme, but it was certainly noticeable. Yet if that is the case, we’re not even 2 years removed from that event. And they are stunned (just stunned, I tell you!) at the lack of multi-year ice? Uhhh…. Have they been asleep the past 2 years?”
Steve Goddard covered this pretty well in a thread here a few days ago:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/15/why-third-year-arctic-ice-will-increase-next-year/

Suppose the Arctic were totally ice-free at the beginning of winter. Then this should lead to the maximum production of ice over the winter. That is, the maximum transfer of heat from ocean to atmosphere. Hence, come springtime, a relatively cooler ocean and warmer atmosphere.
If, instead, the Arctive were completely covered with first year ice at the beginning of winter, this should result in relatively colder atmosphere and warmer ocean. The ice layer is effectively insulating the ocean.
The latent heat of formation of ice must be conducted to the ice/air interface in order to form a thickening ice layer. The rate of heat transfer is inversely proportional to the ice thickness Hence, the rate of heat transfer must vary logartihmically with ice thickness.
So this year, entering winter with relatively low existing ice, we should come to springtime with relatively high Arctic air temperatures and relatively low sea temperatures.
Is that the case? Can we look forward to warmists wailing about the abnormally high Arctic air temperatures in the coming weeks, when it’s a natural consequence of the improved heat transfer from ocean to air?

It is a little strange they put out what should be thought of as a formal “report” and didn’t include any actual data in it other than an illustration that contains some numbers that one can’t actually read.
According to the report, the sea ice is going to melt very fast this summer and, in future summers as well, and global warming is the obvious cause – that is the “impression” that one is supposed to take away from the report.
But like always, I say show me the actual numbers because every time I look into the actual numbers, I find nothing but significant exageration in the reports and in the abstracts – designed to leave a non-factual “impression” on the reader.
Why is it so hard to “prove” something that they consider to be so clear and so obvious? It supposed to be the definition of an “easy proof”.
But what we are given is just words. Facts speaks louder than words.

Wouldn’t they have to spend time purposely disabling any embedded time-stamping on the digital imagery? If so, why? The time of “exposure” would be important for myriad reasons, if this is indeed in pursuit of science. To quote General “Buck” Turgedson from Dr. Strangelove; “Mr. President, I’m beginning to smell a big fat commie rat!”
😉

Gary: I used AstroArt 3.0 to apply an Exponential stretch, then ran the lower histogram stretch up (black level) until I could clearly see the shadow coming off the drill. The light source is coming from the left, and a little bit (15 deg) towards us.
I gave the shadow a generous 40 degree angle assuming foreshortening as the end of the shadow (drill top) lies away from the camera.
From this site: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html
I examined the 3 pics you see at the top of the page.
Even in the latest foggy image, the RGB values are all nearly identical with Blue slightly subdued.
On the sunny day images, out in the sun the ice shows equal RGB. In the shadows, the RGB is the same as the Pen Hadlow holding drill image, Red is most subdued, Blue is higher value.
The shadows are consistent with the dates of April 10 & 12 for the NOAA pics.
So, it is possible, but I cannot confirm that the Pen Hadlow image was taken @ 60N latitude.
Whomever stated that the image is from the air is correct: I can find no horizon in the Pen Hadlow image, but I can get it on the NOAA Arctic StarDot NetCam Sun Apr 19, 143324 2009 image by Exponential stretch in AstroArt 3.0.

deepslope 18:33:43
Yes, it is the need for the alarmists to lie that is most disturbing. I understand why journalists disseminate untruths; they are interested in drama. I understand why politicians support the lies; they are interested in power. But why must people purporting to be scientists lie like this? It’s very corrupt, and can not stand.
However, these jokers aren’t fooling everybody. Did you see the link to William Connolley’s blog in the last thread, where he ridicules this effort?
===========================================

“jorge c. (14:45:06) : please read what william connolley says in his blogs”
Connolley says this there :
“…Catlin Arctic Survey. Why are they doing this? Mostly because it is fun, and you can earn your keep doing it.”http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/04/wandering_across_the_arctic.php
I wonder if William Connolley is earning his “keep” from all of his butchering of Wikipedia?

INGSOC (19:17:07) :
The NOAA Arctic StarDot Netcam has it’s origin, date & time printed right on it.
They hide nothing, and they get the credit for the image.
And the images are 1024 x 576, the X axis being quite normal.

The shadows in the webcam pics from the NOAA are certainly a lot longer than the shadow cast in Pen’s picture: click
So Pen Hadow’s photo must have either been taken at a different time of year, or at a different latitude.
If there’s something I’m missing in this conclusion, please tell me.

“kim (19:20:07) : However, these jokers aren’t fooling everybody. Did you see the link to William Connolley’s blog in the last thread, where he ridicules this effort?”
Thanks – yes it’s quite impressive, given his track record…

Smokey – I estimate the shadow in the picture shows a latitude of around 20 -30N.
I have Google Sketchup pro where you can input the exact location and it casts shadows. To get a shadow that short I needed to reduce the latitude to 20N at noon.

Now they say they were not expecting mostly first-year ice ice, but when they started they expected 80% first year ice:

Pen, Ann and Martin are also keeping a close eye on the weather. Daytime temperatures are currently around -40ºC (-40Fº), and the ice is looking reasonably good so far (being a mix of 80% first year ice and 20% older ice), but the air pressure is dropping rapidly, suggesting that there may be a serious weather front closing in. All to be confirmed in their next dispatch, however.

What planet do you lot come from Here is a processed image from the PDF
1- The image size is 640×427 pixels
2 – the “pole shadow” does not mee the pole base – do not know what the line is but it is not the shadow of the pole. see :http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/4568/drill.jpg my processed picture of the catlin document
3 – look at the possible shadow of the persons legs. The scene is lighted from the right with a diffuse source.
4 – the camera angle is high. this photo is not from the expedition unless taken from a pressure ridge.
5 – Does any of this really matter – it is an illustration of the drill in use.

Yes the Catlin expedition is pointless, a scientific failure and even a fraud, but other than that, it’s kind of like many other Arctic and Antarctic expeditions of earlier years.
What I mean is that the Catlin party is out there freezing on the ice for no real purpose or benefit to anyone.
I wish them a safe trip home and will say no more about their failed efforts at Warmist alarmism – further comment feels like kicking them when they are down, and all that…

Hey Anthony OT [but in the big perspective “On Topic”]… was wondering if you saw Joe Bastardi’s latest rant at AccuW?
Joe wears his heart on his sleeves but he is a damn good meteorologist and I have never seen him THIS fired up.http://proa.accuweather.com/adcbin/professional/bastardi_index.asp
He was reacting to Energy Sec. Stephen Chu’s ridiculous remarks as of late.
Any possibility to do a thread on the “Energy Secretary’s” remarks or are they so stupid and nonsensical….is a post not worth wasting our time on here?
I think Chu should be put up to the chopping block against our experts here.
Either way….thanks for your efforts here at WUWT.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

“Pen Hadow drilling and measuring sea ice” was the caption, and the question is “how can we trust anything they publish”?
I just got my header info from the topic pic, my bad:
SIMPLE = T /
BITPIX = 32 / Updated by AstroArt
NAXIS = 3
NAXIS1 = 510
NAXIS2 = 337
NAXIS3 = 3
COMMENT
The pdf image still processes out the same for me.
I still see the shadow of the drill on exponential stretch and him leaned forward with shadow from his forward lean.
I find it odd to have a pic from a science expedition that is not claimed by some type of date/time/ownership stamp.
I should suppose he is using the drill, with what looks like equip. boxes nearby.
If it’s just a demo pic, then do we have any pics that are not demo?
So, I have to say that yes it matters as I can see nothing to authenticate any claims. This latest report changes nothing, authenticates nothing.
Spent a lot of time today trying to dig into it, comparing with authentic NOAA Arctic cam pics.

Hmmm…. well, I can get shadows from footprints in the overcast NOAA Arctic StarDot NetCam dated Sun Apr 19 14:33:24 2009 by exponential stretchng.
So I should expect the same sort of thing in the Pen Hadlow pic.
Why not publish a pic taken during the Arctic day when NOAA can do it 15 deg further North?
I give up on this Caitlin Expedition goofiness. They don’t seem to want anything to do with being reproducible as to where they are.
Fine with me.
If that is the way they want it, then skepticism and disbelief is theirs to keep.

but the air pressure is dropping rapidly, suggesting that there may be a serious weather front closing in.
What! They don’t have access to a weather forecast?
These clowns know full well whether if a serious weather front is coming or not, but its all about telling a dramatic and heroic narrative.
The Caitlan Expedition is a perfect illustration of AGW being ‘trash peddled to morons’.

@ bill (20:26:17) :
Someone explained earlier that the thin line in the photo was caused by the drill being assembled on the snow. Sounds good to me.
As for the blue in the pictures, ever wondered why for example the camera’s on the Mars-rovers use a Filterwheel instead of a Bayer-filter (or something like that) wich can be found in almost every digital camera that is being sold? And Artic pictures being already low on (low intensity) red don’t do well when your CCD chip is recording in RGGB. (Red, Green, Green and Blue).
Still, in case of the Mars-rovers, you can download the RAW data whereas for the Catlin PR-stunt, well…

Why are they brutalizing that ice cutting all those holes in it! Why isn’t anyone talking about that? That ice is innocent and pure, so fragile. A polar bear could get a leg caught in in those holes. Those poor polar bears. Who will speak for them? And what about the pollutants those Catlin pillagers are leaving behind in the wake of their heartless destruction! Gaia will get revenge for this!
I’ve going to go for as drive in my Smart car!

A. Why use 5 m. of drilling equipment to drill an expected 2 m. of ice?
B. Why is there no definition to the background? It looks like it was shot
in a London studio and “photoshoped”!
C. Shadows? I think you folks are seeing ghosts!
D. I don’t think they drilled any place that wasn’t perfectly flat.
E. The only news here is that the ice was thicker than they expected.
AND
Call the Pentagon if you want a picture of where they are (or not).

I thought about the drill being assembled, but there seems to be only the single imprint (or shadow) so I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Multiple source, 1 a light above (copter, etc.) and another from the Sun.
Got nowhere even with the drill shadow, ending up 15 deg shy of their ‘reported’ position.
Nope, nothing to authenticate.
Move along, nothing to see. (A savethesharks tm!).

“Someone explained earlier that the thin line in the photo was caused by the drill being assembled on the snow. Sounds good to me.”
Since it is a manual drill, the crank cannot be more than a few feet above the ground while you are cranking it. So you put the bit on the crank first and drill, when you have drilled a few feet into the ice, you then install the first 3′ (more or less) extension and begin drilling again. When you have drilled another few feet, you then install the second extension, and so on til the hole is complete. If you look beside Pen, you can see the individual cases for each of the extensions, the crank and the drill bit.
If the drill was completely assembled on the snow, you would not be able to drill a hole, since the crank would be too high to operate.
Of course, the drill may have been completely assembled to demonstrate it’s length.

Perhaps someone here can answer a question for me. When pressure ridges form in the polar ice is there some bridging effect that comes into play that cause the ice to behave differently than normal floating ice and if not and the regular float ratio applies wouldn’t the numerous pictures of them struggling over looming ice ridges indicate they’ve been passing over ice that is 50′- 100’+ thick? I realize that most of the “data” they are collecting is inherently irrelevant and still would be if they were using the finest scientific methodology available, since the survival of polar ice seems to depend much more on the degree and extent to which it is exposed to the destructive forces of winds, currents, and gyres breaking it up and driving it out to warmer waters, than on its’ thickness or the air temperature. Still I am curious whether my thinking on the depth of ice beneath the pressure ridges is correct.

Mike Bryant @21:50:43.
But when your done drilling you pull the drill out and lay it down in the snow while you take a measurement. Then when the helicopter flies by you stand the drill up for a neat picture.

Dave Wendt, your inference about the depth of ice under the ridges is correct, but that is because as sheets of sea ice get pushed up against and onto other sea ice they tilt. The part of the tilted ice that it above the water line (and existing flat ice) forms a ridge. The other end of tilted sheet of ice is well below the water line. Multiple sheets of ice will get pushed up into this tilted orientation forming a thicker area of ice, which may freeze into a solid block.
But the thickness of the ice in this situation tells us nothing about the thickness of the sea ice up until the time it got pushed into this configuration.

One aspect of the issue of ice-thickness and multi-year ice that I have not seen discussed here, particularly as it relates to satellite-based measurements of ice-covered areas of water, is wind-driven over-riding of ice sheets. I spent time in icecamps on the Beaufort and ashore for months at a time in Barrow and other High-Arctic communities. I won’t go into the times when ice thickness in February was grossly and dangerously over-estimated. At least our rigs, theoretically, would float at deck-height; some guys were out there on D7 dozers. Other areas had ice expensively thicker than expected. There was no surface evidence of either condition. Both were due to wind-shifted ice that may have been moved in areas the size of Nebraska. I always suspected, but never had verified, that not all collisions were accommodated with pressure ridges, though they were impressively numerous, though individual section widths may only amount to a few hundred feet at a time. Individual events over a few hours can be impressive. I remember going to bed one “night” (clock-time doesn’t mean much up there) with pack-ice tight against the shore, and getting up about 6 hours later to find no ice of any type within sight. Wind had changed direction, and nothing else. My question is: How much of this over-riding occurs, and thus contributes to longer survival of non-pressure-ridged ice?

@Molon Labe (22:44:34) :
Indeed, there is no way you can tell from that picture if it was taken before or after drilling. As for the lack of shadows, an overcast day can produce such a situation, that combined with a low angle sun will give a rather blue scene.
Still, don’t we look like a bunch of moon-hoaxers when we dissect these pictures?

@Molon Labe (22:44:34) :
Indeed, there is no way you can tell from that picture if it was taken before or after drilling. As for the lack of shadows, an overcast day can produce such a situation, that combined with a low angle sun will give a rather blue scene.
Still, don’t we look like a bunch of moon-hoaxers when we dissect these pictures?
OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi

Steven Goddard:
NSIDC ice map overlaid on the Catlin Route Map
If they were looking for older ice, there were many obvious (and shorter) routes they could have chosen. What made them choose this route, which was apparently too long to be completed and which started on first year ice?
My reading of their aims is to measure a mixture of ice ages.
Looking at your maps (which are not dated or referenced in any way) in the header Can you suggest a better place to start that would enable measurement of different ages?
Further to the east would have placed them predominantly on old ice
Further to the west would have meant tracking over even more 1 year ice.
Everyone seems very keen on using submarines to do this measurement without danger to life* and in half the time with more accuracy. If this were true then why is it not being done (or why are the results not published?). According to the catlin site one of the recipients of the data was to be the US Navy!
* During a triple ship/sub get-together at the pole a while back the UK sub suffered casualties:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7961273.stm
Sub deaths caused by ‘failures’
An explosion which killed two British submariners was caused by “systemic failures”, a coroner has ruled.
Operator mechanic Anthony Huntrod, 20, from Sunderland and leading operator mechanic Paul McCann, 32, from the West Midlands, died on HMS Tireless in 2007.
A self-contained oxygen generator (Scog) blew up while the submarine was under hundreds of feet of Arctic ice.

bill,
Your posts are improving, but the one above leaves out some information that would provide entirely different conclusions.
For one thing, just because the Catlin entertainers say they will provide info to the U.S. Navy means nothing unless the Navy is interested in receiving such information. If you can show that the Navy needs these rigged and arbitrary ice thickness reports, please do so. My own view is that the Navy considers these shenanigans as being contrived for the purpose of publicity that will result in more newspapers being sold, nothing more.
Also, selecting one instance of an unfortunate loss of life leaves out the numerous times that subs have traveled under the Pole. Certainly this has been done hundreds of times at least. There is nothing to indicate that the accident did not happen merely coincidentally with being at the Pole.
Finally, it is pure speculation to assume that the world’s navies are not measuring ice thickness. Just because the results are ‘not published’ means nothing. Do you really think the Navy is in need of these three stooges in order to obtain ice thickness information? By pointing out that the oxygen generator malfunctioned while the sub was ” under hundreds of feet of Arctic ice” indicates that the navy knows the ice thickness.

“Molon Labe (22:44:34) :
Mike Bryant @21:50:43.
But when your done drilling you pull the drill out and lay it down in the snow while you take a measurement. Then when the helicopter flies by you stand the drill up for a neat picture.”
Along with my previous post that is a very likely chain of events… Now, how deep must the ice have been there?
Mike

Bill,
The maps are referenced through a new concept called an html link to the original source. There is probably an input device connected to your computer called a mouse or touchpad. Try clicking on the links.

Tim Channon, SL, Gary Pearse, ;-))
Definitely not a (s)hadow. If you look closely at the main picture at the head of this post, the casings on the ground show a (s)hadow in the opposite direction, small but distinct. I would normally concur with SL about a depression mark from the linked drill bits on the ground, however, in my recollection of drilling piles, & watching borehole drillers on various sites, drill-bit sections are added as drilling progresses, so how does their drill work at the top end 4m high, unless these intrepid explorers have part-time jobs in a circus acrobat act? Having said that, this is certainly a bit of a circus act so perhaps that is how they are doing it!
However, were it to be a (s)hadow, using rough reckoning & scales from the proportions of the man & the drill bit, etc, (always trickey in a photo at some angles), I’d take that as a 3-4-5 triangle, transposing that directly to metres with 3m at the base that would give an angle above the horizontal of about 53°, putting it somewhere south of me!!!! good obs though!

Has anyone seen the equipment list for the expedition, and if so remember the make and model of the cordless electric drill and batteries. I just have to have one :). The performance of the unit is quite remarkable under their conditions even assuming fresh batteries from a resupply, and the lack of a mechanism to trickle charge or even recharge.
Also, leaving used batteries scattered over the Arctic ice would be a bio-hazard to the occasional polar bear that might mistake one for a seal nose sticking out of the ice.
This is unacceptable.
Rich D.
Meeechigan, USA

What happened to the hydrocarbon origins post? I just saw it on reader, and wanted to see the comments. If you pull something that already went out on reader, would you consider just replacing it with a short explanation of why it is being deleted?REPLY: It is shelved for the moment. I am unable to contact the author and without that I can’t let it remain published. – Anthony

Then with all these demo pics (stunts) should it raise the speculation that the Expedition is a prelude to a blockbuster movie? Have a look at the cast and accompanying team. Lotsa great mugs in there. When I consider a movie about science, then what is going on and all the secrecy makes sense.
The Ice thins, the Plot thickens.

“One of the many integrity issues with Catlin is that none of their photos can be dated.”
Is it possible that the photographs were taken with a none digital camera and the developed pictures scanned into their computer? Never done it so wouldn’t know how to identify this. Given their success with batteries and electrical equipment in general they may have taken an old fashioned camera with film in it.

@ M White (11:29:03) :Is it possible that the photographs were taken with a none digital camera and the developed pictures scanned into their computer?
Somehow i think this is way beyond their skills 🙂

Robert Bateman (17:42:03) :
Tim:
Using The Sky v 5 level II, and inputing today’s date, noon, 84.5 N, I get an altitude of 16 deg 41minutes looking due South.
Inputting 60 N, same date & time, looking due South, I get 40 deg 41 minutes altitude.
I’m hazarding a guess that the light shadow from top of pole to ground is from that altitude relevant to the Sun.
60 N fits the bill.
No way to tell if it’s another copter shining a light down or not.
60N even looks somewhat conservative, assuming the drill is close to vertical and the ground is close to horizontal. As the drill is rather tall I guess it must be vertical to not tip over when holding it that way. If the drill extends into the ice it is certainly close to vertical (they don’t drill non-vertical holes, do they?)
According to the Catlin team they are actively seeking out flat ice, so it seems reasonable to assume it is here. The shadow and the drill should then be defining a 90 degree triangle (90 degrees between the drill and its shadow). I measure on my screen 6.3 cm for the drill and 4.3 cm for the shadow. The altitude of the light source (presumably the sun) is then arctan(6.3/4.3) = ~55degrees. You would have to much go further south than 60N to get such a Sun altitude. But if we allow for errors in the assumptions and/or measurements, 60N seems at least reasonable.

I notice that the Catlin web page has data for distance to the pole which is about 34 km closer to the pole than the distance calculated by using the lat-lon coordinates. The April 20 location is 84°39’36″N, 126°25’ 41”W which by my calculation using the Great Circle Distance equation, is 594 km to the pole. The Catlin web page says they are about 558.93 km to the pole. They made the same error on April 18 when they reported a location of 84°31’31″N, 127° 47’ 59” W and 575.6 km to the pole when the correct distance was 608.8 km. The last time they reported the correct distance was April 17 when they were at 84°27’58″N, 127° 50’ 31” W and reported 615.6 km to the pole. In one day, they were suddenly an extra 34 km closer.
It is probably just an error on the web page, but it is worth monitoring. Surely they are not lost.

M White (11:29:03) : “Is it possible that the photographs were taken with a none digital camera and the developed pictures scanned into their computer? Never done it so wouldn’t know how to identify this. Given their success with batteries and electrical equipment in general they may have taken an old fashioned camera with film in it.”
1) Images from a digital camera are not “developed.” A CMOS sensor in the camera is essentially an area scanner where as a computer scanner is linear.
2) Images from a digital camera are transferred to a computer where the image can be adjusted, manipulated, and re-named. The Catlin web site shows a Nikon D2Xs and another large pro Nikon (D-3?). Those camera record meta data with the RAW file, so there should exist image data. It remains to be seen if they will release that data.
3) Regarding “old fashioned . . . film,” at the temperatures they are experiencing, the ISO of conventional film changes. In those conditions, light is also quite low. A low ISO film is not recommended. A digital camera can dial in a high ISO rating and shoot well in low light, much better than conventional film.

Is it just me, or do others think that measuring ice thickness during the winter/early spring is the wrong time to measure? Shouldn’t it be measured at the end of the melt season? Most studies admit that summer melt and ice thickness/conditions at the end of melt is a far more sensitive measure of ice conditions that lead to trends (either gaining or loosing ground).

I spent 26 years as an Air Force Photo Analyst. I’ve downloaded the picture everyone’s commented on, done some gamma/contrast manipulations, and found that there is NO shadow for the pole being held. There IS a shadow for the man (a very poor, weak one) and for the drill. There is a sort of shadow for the material piled around to the image’s left, but again, weak and unmeasurable. ALL the shadows I can find slant toward the lower left edge of the image. I would have to state that the slight straight line I see from one manipulation would be more in line with an indenture into the snow where the dipstick was assembled, rather than a shadow.
April sunrise at 85 degrees north would be about 10:15 in the morning, with sunset around 1:45 PM (sun time, not necessarily “local” time). The sun would probably rise about ten degrees above the horizon, AT MOST. Shadows would be from ten to 20 times what I see in this photo. They would also be far more purple than blue, as in this photo, due to light refraction.

Here is some more info on the Catlin survey.
There are a number of photos on their ftp site atftp://ftp.cas-media.org/exped_uploads/iPAQ/
It is a protected site but the login info is
Username: cas-media.org – Password: mediaacce55
This login info was given out in a press release for the media (I believe we are media also).
Also, there is a Google Earth kml file available athttp://www.solaradata.com/Solara.kml
which shows their progress with frequent updates.
I have been tracking their progress and here is the location data with dates and lon-lat locations converted from deg-min-sec from their web site:
28-Feb Start estimate,-130,81.5
06-Mar,-130.0755556,82.005
11-Mar,-129.7172222,81.92583333
20-Mar,-129.6622222,81.91083333
31-Mar,-129.7747222,83.04027778
01-Apr,-129.5527778,83.18611111
02-Apr,-129.4075,83.33138889
03-Apr,-129.4041667,83.48805556
04-Apr,-129.335,83.62694444
08-Apr,-128.9,83.87
09-Apr,-128.975,83.86361111
10-Apr,-128.9963889,83.88361111
11-Apr,-128.8330556,83.84722222
12-Apr,-128.9286111,83.93583333
15-Apr,-127.9191667,84.27777778
16-Apr,-127.9202778,84.37833333
17-Apr,-127.8419444,84.46611111
18-Apr,-127.7997222,84.52527778
20-Apr,-126.4280556,84.66
I put together a kml file from the above data and compared the above data with the Solara kml file. It is apparent that the Catlin group spent from March 6 to March 20 essentially immobile. Their web page is currently missing this period of information on their web page. I found the March 6 to 20 data from Google cache, however.
This was apparently the period they were stuck in their tent due to bad weather. Seehttp://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/ops_room.aspx?categoryID=27

Adolfo Giurfa (16:15:43) :
OT: What happened with the oil post? It suddenly disappeared .
REPLY: I sent an email to the author with a notice that I published it and a question and it bounced. If I can’t contact the author then I can’t in good faith keep it online, so it is shelved for now. – Anthony

Oh rats. I was planning to send a link to that thread to some folks. I’ve always been intrigued by Thomas Gold’s hypothesis of an abiotic origin for petroleum. Seems plausible for natural gas, at any rate, considering how much extraterrestrial methane there is.
What is the author’s name?
/Mr Lynn

Pieter F (17:14:20) :
2) Images from a digital camera are transferred to a computer where the image can be adjusted, manipulated, and re-named. The Catlin web site shows a Nikon D2Xs and another large pro Nikon (D-3?). Those camera record meta data with the RAW file, so there should exist image data. It remains to be seen if they will release that data.
According to the website they use a D3X and a Panasonic Lumix.http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/headline.aspx?postId=1633) Regarding “old fashioned . . . film,” at the temperatures they are experiencing, the ISO of conventional film changes. In those conditions, light is also quite low. A low ISO film is not recommended. A digital camera can dial in a high ISO rating and shoot well in low light, much better than conventional film.
I’d think that the film itself might become rather brittle and inflexible too?
Static buildup on the film can cause interesting effects as well, like lightning marks on the images.

I think its a promo picture because they supposedly stretch a string along a straight line and take measurements every so many feet. I transcribed their proceedure from an audio recording in an earlier Catlin article.. had that been an actual measurement you would have supposedly been able to see the drill area, which would not consist of just one hole. But honestly who knows… I just feel sorry for the rescue team that has to risk their lives to pull these foolish people off of the ice. The later in the season they go, the more dangeous the whole deal becomes.

pkatt (00:57:22) :
I think its a promo picture because they supposedly stretch a string along a straight line and take measurements every so many feet. I transcribed their proceedure from an audio recording in an earlier Catlin article.. had that been an actual measurement you would have supposedly been able to see the drill area, which would not consist of just one hole.
Unless the photo was taken while the first hole was being drilled!

Also regarding film, developing it would be a nightmare. Developing time is contingent on solution temperature. They would have ample dark hours to do it in, no dark room needed. They would also have to have an enlarger and print paper, and a scanner. Or they could just do slides and scan the film. Seems beyond their capabilities.

Beat the drums till the end.http://www.planetaazul.com.mx/www/2009/04/20/lack-of-permanent-arctic-ice-surprises-explorers/
The head of a British team walking to the North Pole on a mission to gauge how fast Arctic ice sheets are melting said on Friday he was surprised by how little permanent ice he had found so far
OTTAWA, Canada; April 20, 2009.- Pen Hadow and two other adventurers set off in early March on a 1,000-km (620-mile) trek from Canada’s Arctic to the North Pole. The team was set down in an area where scientists had been sure there would be permanent multiyear ice.

Catlin Arctic Survey Corrects Distance to Pole
Finally on April 22, the Catlin Arctic Survey web page has the correct distance to the North Pole. On April 21, the distance was given as 551.16 km. Today, with the same lat-lon, the distance is 583.38 km which agrees with my estimate of 582.8 km using the Great Circle Distance equation. Note that the Great Circle Distance Equation does not correct for the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid.
As noted in my earlier post, on April 18, the CAS web site suddenly had the team about 34 km closer to the pole than the actual distance.
I like to think that the CAS headquarters folks found their error by reading WUWT. But it begs the question to what extent the 34 km error affected their planning.
It appears that the team will not make it to the pole as Steve Goddard had guessed earlier. Since March 20 when they finally got going again, they have traveled about 323 km in 32 days or just over 10 km/day. Since the (now corrected) distance to the pole is 583 km, it would take them about 58 days to reach the pole, but they only have 48 days left on their 100 day trip. Plus they are encountering areas of open water and thin ice which will likely slow them down.

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